


All That Keeps Him Sane

by DinosaurTheology



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Ashes Scene in Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Heavy Angst, Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity Gems, Loneliness, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Stranded
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 06:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14910306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: Tony Stark has had a really bad day, to put it mildly. Only one thing keeps him sane or, at least, a reasonable facsimile thereof.





	All That Keeps Him Sane

**Author's Note:**

> Hope y'all enjoy. Wrote this after working the wreck from hell last night. I really love Tony's... let's say "spirited" manner of approaching the world and its problems. I think that Nebula's sort of dark, snarky worldview would complement his in a very nastily funny way.

Tony has been on Titan for less than a day and already he loathes the place. There's just nothing here but wreckage, dirt, dingy, orange clouds that stretch out forever overhead and ash. So much ash. Some of it tragically, impossibly used to be human, or at least human shaped. He hadn't known the lost Guardians super well but they seemed like okay people, at least for a bunch of space-faring freaks, geeks and weirdos. One of those piles, though, had clutched at him, told him that something felt just deeply, fundamentally wrong and begged him in a pathetically broken voice not to just evaporate on the wind.

For that particular pile of ash? Tony is dedicated to fucking up a certain hyper-muscular space grape. The vengeance will be ugly, it will be brutal and it will last a long, long time. Their little boy-band is called the Avengers for a reason, after all. Sometimes a wrong can't be righted but, well... you know the drill. It's a badass boast and a half even if it feels pretty damn hollow at this point.

“What are you brooding about?”

Oh, yeah. There was one other thing, here, beyond all the obvious décor and objets d'art. Tony has been left the proud companion of yet another homicidal robot. Yay, I guess? He rolls his eyes and says, “I don't know, Chicklet... maybe the fact that this place is a fucking prison on planet bullshit in the galaxy of sucks camel dicks?”

“Nebula.”

“What?” Oh, he just cannot deal with this right now. Not another pouting robot. Vision is bad enough when he scolds him for breaking curfew.

“My name's not Chicklet, it's Nebula. And this is the planet Titan in the Milky Way galaxy.”

Tony clutches at his face. He rubs his eyes and feels the headache building behind them. “Okay Nebula. Nebbie? Nebbie's good. We're going with that. Nebbie, I know we're on Titan and sort of just, like, hoped we were still in the Milky Way. The rest of that was what we, on Earth, call a joke.”

“A joke?”

“Yeah, a joke. Hyperbolic statement meant to portray some metaphorical truth in a humorous light, usually intended to elicit laughter.”

“I know what a joke is,” she says. “That wasn't a very good one.”

“So I'm not ready to open for Arsenio, here,” he says. “Sue me. I've got a little on my mind.”

“Your companions?”

“Yeah, them. Especially the kid and the wizard. And other people, too. Back on Earth. There's a lot of them.”

“You've got about fifty percent less on your mind than you did yesterday, then.”

“Huh?”

“What we pouting robots call a joke.”

He scowled. “That wasn't a very good one, either.”

She shrugs. “You're not the only one who's lost a lot, today.”

He nods. “Your sister, right?”

“Exactly. The bitch. I love her almost as much as I hated her. Father always loved her best.” She spreads her hands. “I guess that didn't work out particularly well for her in the end.”

“No kidding,” he says. “Families are kinda the worst. Remind me to tell you about mine sometime.”

“I'd prefer it if you didn't.”

“Okay, okay, no worries,” he says. He raises his hands. “If you don't mind, then, I'll head back to my brooding.”

He does, for a while, and then spends the better part of a week scrounging a living out of the dust of a dead planet. There's some food on the Milano—a ton of something called zarg nuts, a bunch of candy in Quill's bunk and some MREs in the galley. He'll figure out how to fly this bucket of bolts soon, as soon as he's ready to face that reality of Earth, the horror and pain that he knows he's going to be thrust into the middle of. Is hiding out from it a little while sort of cowardly? Probably but he can't help it. Hasn't he earned a little cowardice, a little selfishness, at this point?

One thing keeps him going. There's a woman waiting. He's tried to talk to Nebula about it, just to make conversation. It went as poorly as expected. She's not a particularly good conversationalist, even as pouting robots go, so Tony is reduced to talking to himself. That's okay. It guarantees intelligent conversation with an excellent raconteur and it keeps his mind on Pepper.

Pepper. Virginia Potts. Miss Virginia Potts—Mrs. Virginia Stark? That sounds good, too. He keeps her face, wide green eyes, freckles and a lock of strawberry gold hair curled around his finger, at the front of his brain. He has to get back to Earth, back to Pepper. She has to be there, has to be worried about him. She sounded so scared when he talked to her, when he blasted off into space after Strange and the Maw. She must be worried sick, might not have slept or eaten. He has to get back to her, get a message to her at least so that she can rest easy that he is alive and intact.

It has not even crossed his mind that she might be among the lost. Part of him knows that this is a coping mechanism, a way to hold onto sanity already far eroded by just so much stress that the fucking Hulk would bend under it. Another voice inside, what he believes may be a deeper, truer voice—he calls it, whimsically, the voice of the Turtle—argues that he would know if Pepper was gone, that he'd feel it with something like Peter's spider sense. It would gnaw in his gut, twist in him, torture like the loss of an organ or ischemic flesh.

He lies at night under the dark, sienna sky and dreams of her. There's nothing really special about the dreams, not really. He just visualizes eating breakfast, waking up beside her, what her bare feet feel like on his lap. He talks to her, sometimes, and can swear that he hears her voice on the whistling Titan wind. Wherever she is he knows that she is dreaming of him, too. It's as safe and sure as breathing and it's all that keeps him sane.


End file.
